Tender steak cooked with vegetables in a dark ale, and then wrapped in a flaky buttery crust.
Cut the meat into 1 1/2 inch pieces. Season the flour with salt and pepper, and then brown each piece in vegetable oil. You may need to do this in small batches. When the beef is browned on all sides, transfer to a Dutch Oven.
Once all the meat is cooked, add the onion to the pan and cook for a couple of minutes. Then add this to the cooking pan, together with the shallot.
Then add the beef stock and the Guinness to the pan, together with the thyme, Worcestershire sauce, cider vinegar, tomato puree, garlic, and frozen vegetables.
Cover the Dutch Oven and cook in the oven at 300 degrees for 3 hours, stirring every 30 minutes.
While the stew is cooking, make the pastry. Mix the sugar, salt, and milk.
In a food processor, mix the butter and flour.
Add the eggs and the milk mixture until a smooth pastry is formed.
The pastry should be easy to form into shapes. Put the pastry in the fridge for an hour.
When the pastry has cooled, and the stew has cooked, you can start making the pies:
Remove pastry from the fridge and roll out on a lightly floured surface to about 3-4mm thickness. Use a cookie cutter to cut round pastry pieces for the base and top that suit your muffin tin. The pastry of the bottom should extend beyond the edge so that you can crimp the top and bottom together properly.
Place the pastry in the molds and fill with the stew using a spoon. Brush egg wash (whipped egg with a splash of water) around the edge of the base pastry and place the top pastry layer on top. The egg wash should act a bit like glue.
Then crimp top to bottom pastry layers using a fork. Make sure you get a good crimp to prevent any leakage. Repeat for all the pies.
rush the top with egg wash and place the molds in the oven at 350f for 40 minutes to cook the pies.